Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #95 Fascism in Europe

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The SS were the dead­liest and most feared part of the Third Reich. In ear­ly 1998, resid­ual ele­ments of the SS were man­i­fest­ing them­selves pub­licly. This pro­gram details a march by Lat­vian Waf­fen SS vet­er­ans, includ­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion by impor­tant Lat­vian gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials. Con­tro­ver­sy over their par­tic­i­pa­tion led to the res­ig­na­tion of sev­er­al of them. In Aus­tria as well, Waf­fen SS vet­er­ans have been mak­ing their pres­ence felt. Already shak­en by the rise of Jörg Haider (the so-called “yup­pie fas­cist” dis­cussed in an ear­li­er series avail­able from Spit­fire), Aus­tria expe­ri­enced renewed con­tro­ver­sy when Aus­tri­an Waf­fen SS vets launched a high-pro­file protest against a trav­el­ing expo­si­tion about the par­tic­i­pa­tion by the Ger­man Wehrma­cht in Nazi crimes. Much of the broad­cast cen­ters on the re-emer­gence of Nazism in Ger­many, fueled by con­tin­ued high unem­ploy­ment. The recent elec­toral suc­cess of the pro-Nazi DVU of Ger­hard Frey (see the pre­vi­ous descrip­tion) points to the prob­a­bil­i­ty that, if unem­ploy­ment con­tin­ues at the present lev­els or goes high­er, it will engen­der more extrem­ism. High unem­ploy­ment is stim­u­lat­ing fas­cist sym­pa­thy and activ­i­ty in oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries as well. With the com­ing of the “Euro,” it is quite pos­si­ble that the fis­cal con­straints imposed by the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for mem­ber­ship in the EMU will per­pet­u­ate job­less­ness at present lev­els, with results that may be trag­ic.

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